Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Readers
of the CFM Blog are also prime consumers of TrendsWatch, the
Alliance’s annual forecasting report, which is available as a digital
download and as a dynamic
web version with real-time updates on this year’s trends. We are able to
share this high-quality content for free due to the generosity of our sponsors:
every year a small cadre of forward-thinking companies and individuals pitch in
to underwrite this work. Solid
Light is one of our 2017 sponsors, and in this
week’s guest post president Cynthia Torp explains why one of this year’s trends
has special resonance for professionals engaged in exhibit design.

Like many of you, I read this
year’s TrendsWatch from cover to cover, and it changed
the way I think about my work. The trend that is most impactful to our work is
the steady decline in empathy in today’s audiences.

As museum professionals,
all of us have the privilege and the responsibility to help visitors feel
empathy—to make the leap from looking at the world from only their own
perspective to feeling what it’s like to be another person, in another time, or
even another species. It’s more than just helping them intellectually
understand the facts.

Those of us who specialize
in museum exhibit design know that good design whispers rather than shouts.
It’s virtually invisible to the casual observer, yet makes a strong impact by
helping activate the visitor’s empathy and guide them on their emotional
journey through an exhibit.

We are planning and
designing the new permanent exhibition for the American
Civil War Museum in
Richmond, Va. What a fabulous opportunity to help strengthen visitors’
empathetic muscle! The museum’s exhibits seek to change how the Civil War is
traditionally understood, bringing history alive, so the story resonates with today’s
audiences and challenges visitors to acknowledge the unpleasant realities of
history. With our design, we are striving to give people the tools to make
sense of the conflict and uncertainty of the times by immersing them in the
personal stories of the soldiers, and the enslaved and free people who lived during
the Civil War.

This is where thoughtful exhibit
design and storytelling come in. A key component to our design is a process called
emotional mapping, which lays out the ebb and flow of the story, striking the
balance of making the story come alive by helping visitors process the
information so it impacts them without overwhelming them—or worse, leaving them
feeling nothing.

Exhibit designers use Emotional mapping
to plan the ebb and flow of the story.

While still in its
conceptual stage, one of several perspectives we plan to focus on in the
exhibit is that of the personal choices people were forced to confront and the
resulting consequences of their decisions. By telling the individual stories of
civilians living through the Siege of Vicksburg in Mississippi—an event that
turned the city into a battlefield and drove the population to flee their
homes, some taking refuge in caves to shelter from gunfire—not only do we shed
light on the American Civil War; we also provide insights on what it felt like to
deeply experience the isolation and fear for both citizens and soldiers alike.
The use of bold imagery, immersive multimedia and personal narratives
throughout the experience will help to engage the visitor as an active
participant in the storytelling and strengthen their connection to
history.

Spatial storytelling is
powerful—the exhibits we design and build help build empathy among people who
come in believing that they’re different, then leave with a deeper
understanding of how many similarities we all share and, hopefully, impel them
to act for the greater good.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Some people think that
because museums are nonprofits, they are not allowed to make money. Cue my
mantra: nonprofit is a tax status, not a business strategy. A financially
successful nonprofit can use surplus income to improve services, scale up its
work, and do more good in the world. The widely held belief that mission-based
work is inherently unprofitable is being challenged by an increasing number of
for-profit companies that embed a goal of making the world a better place into
their business models. Some of these companies voluntarily become certified as “B Corps”—documenting through a third party the ways
in which they benefit their employees, their community and the environment. And
there is no longer a simple dichotomy between nonprofit and for-profit: a
growing suite of “hybrid” legal structures, such as benefit
corporations, allow businesses to balance financial profits with the achievement
of mission-related goals. Where could museums fit into this growing set of
options? In researching that question, I came across Biomimicry 3.8, a for-profit company, certified as a B Corp, that uses the study of
biological structures and processes to “transform the world by emulating
nature’s designs and core principles.” I reached out to Nicole Miller, managing
director at Biomimicry 3.8, and she explained a bit about their history and
their work.

Nicole Miller, Managing DirectorBiomimicry 3.8

Nicole, can you give
our readers a brief description of what Biomimicry 3.8 does? What kinds of
products and services do you provide?

There are three primary components to our business –
consulting, training and thought leadership. Our consulting team delivers
biological intelligence to help companies design new products, processes,
buildings and even cities. Companies often want to support their efforts to use
biomimicry as an innovation strategy, so we train people how to DO biomimicry. We
offer everything from one-week immersions to a Master’s of Science degree
through our partnership with Arizona State University. And our thought
leadership team sets the vision for the next frontier of innovation inspired by
nature. A recent example is the “Factory as Forest” concept. We are now helping
companies design their facilities to function like the local forest next door,
producing net positive benefits to people and their communities.

Your organization is
a certified B Corps—tell us what that means.

For us, it means being focused on doing good vs. doing less
bad. B Corps are companies dedicated to a purpose beyond their bottom line, on
social and environmental factors that impact their business. The certification
process holds companies to a higher standard of accountability and transparency
that is not often seen in business today. Collectively, B Corps are redefining
what “success” means in business, which is really important to us. We want to
demonstrate that success comes from happy and engaged employees who are empowered
by their work to save the world, no matter how small the impact might be.

So Biomimicry 3.8 is
a mission-driven company. What is your mission?

Our mission is to help change-makers transform the world by
emulating nature’s designs and core principles.

That sounds like a
mission that a natural history museum might have! You have a sister-organization, the Biomimicry
Institute, that is a nonprofit. What is the relationship between the two
organizations?

Yes, it’s been a journey navigating the roles of the two
entities. After (Biomimicry 3.8 co-founder) Janine Benyus wrote her book Biomimicry:
Innovation Inspired by Nature, companies started calling and saying, “we
want you to help us innovate using nature” so the Biomimicry Guild was launched
to support the growing requests. Shortly after the Guild was established, it
was clear that the work went beyond consulting and we really needed a
nonprofit entity to support growing the meme of biomimicry. So the Biomimicry
Institute was born. The two organizations operated independently until we began
to find there was overlap in our efforts. We decided to bring both entities under
one brand, Biomimicry 3.8, to streamline our efforts and reduce redundancies. This
worked great, until it didn’t. It was a 2-year experiment that ultimately created
more work for our internal admin teams, so after much consideration, we decided
to pull the two apart. We still work together very closely to align our
strategic goals and priorities and leverage our efforts. The Institute does
amazing work in the student education space with K-12 programs, a global design
challenge and AskNature, which is an open innovation platform to support
biomimetic design.

I understand that
Biomimicry 3.8 is in the process of changing its legal status from a for-profit
company to a benefit corporation. What does that mean, and why did you decide
to make that change?

A benefit corporation is a type of for-profit corporate
entity that includes positive impact on society, workers, the community and the
environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals. They are
required to consider the impact of their decisions not only on their
shareholders but also on their stakeholders (for example, their community, or
the public as a whole.) We decided to make this change to demonstrate our
commitment to ensuring our company makes a positive impact on society, our employees,
the communities in which we work, and of course, the environment. We are
dedicated to helping people see the value in learning FROM nature, not just
extracting nature’s resources.

So your company has
worked a bit in all three worlds: for profit, nonprofit and hybrid legal
structures. What are the advantages or disadvantages of each?

What I have learned is any of the structures can support
making money and delivering a positive impact. Of course, what you do with that
money is limited by your structure, but in the end these structures come down
to taxes and how the world perceives you.

What about the
practical differences in governance?

A board of directors holds the fiduciary responsibility of
the financial and organizational health of the organization or company
regardless if nonprofit or for profit. In general my opinion is nonprofit
boards have a lot more oversight of the organizational direction and details, therefore
working with them does take more time. Shareholders typically want to see the
financial returns and focused on the numbers. With B corps or mission-aligned
company investors understand they are investing in something bigger than just a
financial return and so there usually focus on other aspects of long term
stability, beyond finances. This is just my opinion. I have served on for
profit and nonprofit boards and each one was unique on its structure and
oversight - it ultimately came down to personalities and leadership style.

What advice would you
give people creating a new mission-driven organization and trying to decide
whether they should be for-profit, nonprofit, a benefit corporation or other
hybrid?

Often if you are doing mission-driven work, you can quickly
be labeled as nonprofit “type” company. I think another misconception is that
nonprofits don’t make money. What is exciting is to have structures like
Benefit Corporations that allow you operate in a space of being for-profit
oriented – proving that doing good is good business. My advice would be to examine
what it would take today to build a 100-year company. Is it to teach, is it to
manufacture, is it to do both? Then, establish a structure to support that. And
like nature, understand that you always need to adapt to changing conditions
and should have a structure that can best support that.

Not too long ago, the
US was pretty clearly divided into three sectors: for profit companies,
dedicated to, well, profit; government agencies that provide shared public
goods and nonprofits that exist to improving the world in some way. How do you
think the rise of hybrid legal structures will affect these traditional
sectors, particularly nonprofits?

The rise of hybrid legal structures is really enabling more
flexibility in what a company can do to support its mission. It’s less about having
to fit into a box that limits their growth and capabilities. This is such an
incredible shift, from an economic standpoint and because it enables companies
to give their employees a platform to make a difference.

What led you
to choose to work in a mission-driven company? How does Biomimicry 3.8 align
with your personal values and motivations?

Luck, proximity and passion. Prior to joining B3.8, my work
was in product development, global supply chain management, trade and commerce.
I saw first-hand EVERYTHING that is required to make on-trend products, move
goods across oceans, and support the growing demands of a throw away society where
it is cheaper to buy something new then get it repaired or put it back in the
value chain. No matter what I did to influence positive social and
environmental practices with my suppliers, the negative externalities were well
beyond the control of my company, and even industry. It was very overwhelming
for me. Rather than continue to contribute to the negative impacts, I wanted to
work on the solution. It was at that time I was introduced to biomimicry. I was
working in Montana where Biomimicry 3.8 is headquartered, and it didn’t take long
for our worlds to collide. I was fascinated by the topic and was so shocked to learn
the company operated in my backyard! In my career, I have always played the
role of a builder, so when the company was looking to grow its business model,
we clicked. The timing was perfect.

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Tuesday I blogged about Benefit Corporations—a relatively
new kind of “hybrid” legal structure for mission-driven for-profits. Today’s
post is about B Corps—companies participating in a certification program that
measures their impact on the world. I wish to heaven whoever made up the names
for these entities hadn’t made them so dang similar. I spent the first year I
was reading and thinking about them confusing the two, and occasionally mangling
the terms. Here’s an ultra-simple primer:

“Benefit corporation” is a legal status. Companies
incorporated as benefit corporations have a legal obligation to deliver both
financial and social/environmental returns to their stockholders.

“Certified B Corporation”—often shortened to B Corp—Is a
voluntary certification system available to for-profit organizations. Administered
by the nonprofit B Lab, B Corp
certification attests that a company is meeting certain criteria to demonstrate
how it operates responsibly with regard to the environment, its workers, its
customers, its community, and its governance.

How are they related? Benefit Corporations and B Corps are
both manifestations of a growing movement to “use business as a force for good”
(as B Lab puts it). As such, it is yet another factor “fuzzing the boundaries”
between the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. Some companies double down,
incorporating as Benefit Corporations and
becoming certified as B Corps.

Completes an impact assessment that measures its effect on
its community. As with LEED certification, a company has to achieve a minimum
score across four segments (governance, workforce, community,
environment).

Meet the legal requirements for certification; including
updating the company’s mission statement, getting board and shareholder
approval and filing amended articles with the appropriate secretary of state.

I’m sure you’ve heard of some of them: Ben and Jerry’s for one, the ice
cream company famous for its activism and devotion to the environment and
workers’ quality of life. On their B Lab page, they avow their mission to “advance
new models of economic justice that are both sustainable and replicable.” The
online marketplace Etsy is another, describing themselves as “a people-powered
company with a social mission.” Patagonia,
a business built around outdoor sports, ties their success to the health of our
planet. These three companies are all huge, but many small businesses choose to
become certified as well.

Why should museums care?

As with Benefit Corporations, B Corps represent one more
trend blurring the boundaries between for-profit and nonprofit organizations.
As more for-profits find ways such as B Corps certification to verify their
mission and impact, they will exert pressure on nonprofits to clarify how their
own missions are distinct, and deserving of philanthropic support, and to be
equally accountable for results.

If more museums choose to be for-profit (I included a short
list in the previous post), they could use B Corps certification as a way to
demonstrate their dedication to mission and to benefiting their community.

Take some time to browse the B Lab listing of B Corps,
read these companies’ descriptions of their work and see how they articulate
the “change they seek.” I’ve found a lot of businesses that share a lot of
values with our sector, and are in some instances doing related work. In coming
weeks, I’ll feature some of their stories on the Blog. Stay tuned.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

I’m going to ask you to bear with me as I engage in some
deep, extended geeking about business models in coming weeks, via a series of essays and guest posts exploring changes in business and
philanthropy that are reshaping the niche museums occupy in society. First up
is an exploration of benefit corporations: what they are, how they impact
museums, and how they may shape the future.

One challenge facing the whole nonprofit sector is that the
distinction between our work and that of for-profit businesses is increasingly
fuzzy. This is, in part, our own dang fault. A lot of what museums do to earn
money is indistinguishable from for-profit counterparts: we sell stuff in our
shops, we run restaurants, we rent out our space for weddings and graduation
parties. Many of the distinctive mission-related things we do (conducting
research, preserving collections) goes largely unseen and unknown. Many of the
visible mission-related things we do go unappreciated (For example, Reach
Advisors reports that only 12% of the American public thinks of museums as
educational.)

Not all for profit businesses are in it"just for the money"

Part of this fuzziness comes from the way the for-profit
sector behaves as well. I’ve never bought into the dichotomy of “for-profit:
money grubbing, bad” v. “nonprofit: altruistic, on the side of angels, good!” I
know plenty of independent business people (including many museum consultants)
who choose to do what they do because they believe their work makes the world a
better place. And many of these people make decisions based on more than the
bottom line. Sponsoring the local teen soccer team may get a business' name on
their jerseys, but the The Hole Thing probably spent more on the uniforms than they
get back from a resulting uptick in donuts sales.

Then there’s the fact that some high profile museums are
for-profit entities: Biltmore, a huge
historic house/site in North Carolina; the Museum of Sex in NYC; the Dallas
World Aquarium; the City Museum in St. Louis; and
Graceland, to name a few. Frankly, people may not know or care whether a museum
is nonprofit or for-profit. Both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland
and the International Spy Museum here in DC started out as for-profit entities,
before eventually applying for 501(c)3 status. Even when they were for-profits,
I knew of people who volunteered their time and donated objects to those
museums. And many for-profit exhibit venues are
indistinguishable from museums, to the public at least, especially when they
host exhibits such as plastinated human bodies or animatronic dinosaurs.

Now there is a new trend further blurring the
nonprofit/for-profit boundary: the rise of hybrid legal structures. The most
prevalent of these is the benefit corporation, a type of for-profit corporation
that is legally obligated to create material positive impact on society and the
environment in addition to financial profitability. Shareholders hold the
benefit corporation accountable for its financial, social AND
environmental performance. This provides the benefit corporation with legal
cover for making decisions about operations that may reduce the financial
return for investors—things like paying a living wage, sourcing materials from
sustainable sources, or supporting minority-owned businesses via their supply chain.

In 2010, Maryland became the first state to pass benefit
corporation legislation, and now this legal structure is authorized by 30 U.S.
states and the District of Columbia. As
of April, 2015 there were over
2,100 active benefit corporations in the US. From this modest start the
movement is gaining steam nationally and internationally. Italy has authorized a
similar kind of entity, Società Benefit, for the whole country.

Why doesn’t an organization devoted to fulfilling a social
or environmental mission simply incorporate as a nonprofit? I’ve asked that
question of a number of people who run benefit corporations, and they usually
flip the question, asking “Why would we want to be a nonprofit?” They often see
nonprofit governance as problematic and inefficient, and grant funding as coming with too many strings compared to relatively small awards. Also, nonprofit
status itself confers fewer benefits than it used to: payments in lieu of taxes
are increasingly common, and tax reform may well shrink charitable donations in
coming years.

Perhaps most compelling is this argument: if you have a choice between being a donor, and producing a social good with your money, or being an investor
in a company that produces a social good AND gives you a return on your
investment, which would you pick? Nonprofits may pride themselves on
transparency and accountability, but they often do a sloppy job of quantifying
their social or environmental impact. Benefit corporations are required to use
comprehensive, credible, independent, and transparent third-party standards to
certify their social and environmental performance.

The rise of benefit corporations is being driven in part by
established philanthropies. Funders such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the
Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and Omidyar Network (a philanthropic
investing group) are growing increasingly impatient with the seeming inability
of billions of dollars in philanthropy to actually solve problems. Lots of
programs alleviate poverty, or homelessness, but we still have large
populations of people who are poor and homeless. Large scale challenges, like
climate change, will clearly require large scale solutions. That’s why
MacArthur Foundation launched 100&Change competition last year, promising
$100 million to fund a winning proposal that promises to make measure progress
towards solving a significant problem.

Even large scale philanthropic support can only go so far.
Foundations are legally obligated to give away at least 5% of their assets each
year in grants, but the leaders of foundations are becoming increasingly aware
that they might have more influence on the world with the other 95% of the
money they control, via the investments they choose to make. For that reason,
foundations are joining the ranks of so called impact investors who put their
money into companies that deliver both financial returns and social/environmental
improvements. In April, the Ford Foundation announced it would devote $1
billion of its investments to “impact” funds, prompting me to blog about the implications of foundation impact investing.

The amount of money foundations can invest to produce social
good is dwarfed by the massed funds of individuals. In 2014, US foundations
controlled $715 billion in assets. As of March, 2016, Americans held $6.8
trillion in all employer-based
defined contribution retirement plans, $4.8 trillion of that in 401(k)
plans, and that’s only one small piece of the investment fund landscape. The US
is seeing rapid growth in the number of investors choosing, or pressuring their
fund managers to choose, socially responsible investments. As of 2016, $7 trillion
was invested in strategies focused on environmental, social and corporate
governance (ESG) causes in the US, compared to $639 billion in 1995 (source
here). Impact investing is a subset of ESG that focuses on producing active
good rather than merely avoiding harm. Last year investors put $22.1
billion towards 8,000 such impact investments, and there is about $144 billion
total in the impact investing market.

If, or when, the number of benefit corporations reaches
critical mass, they will be able to tap into these cause-based investor
dollars as a group. I can see a future in which I could not only choose an investment
portfolio that does general social good, but a fund that promises specific
returns, such as educational impact, along with my financial dividends.

Why should museums care? Here are a few reasons that have occurred to me:

The proliferation of benefit corporations—financially
self-sustaining organizations documenting the good they do—Is yet one more trend
that may lead the public to question why nonprofits deserve their charitable
support.

As successful benefit corporations create a
growing body of for-profit business models around doing social and environment
good, museums can use these examples as inspiration for developing their own
mission-related earned income streams. At very least, it will help museum
closely define which of their mission-based activities are immune to
monetization (collections storage? academic research?) and hone their pitch on
why those functions are worthy of philanthropic or government support.

If the benefit corporate structure system and
impact investing mature and intertwine as their proponents hope, they will
create a massive source of capital for mission-based organizations. In that
scenario, it might be attractive for a museum to become a benefit corporation,
satisfying shareholders rather than members, in order to tap these funds; or to
create sister organizations with benefit corporation status in order to have
the best of both worlds.

For those of you who held out to the end of this essay—I’d love to see your comments below. Next up, a briefing on B corps, a
voluntary certification program that for
profit and nonprofit companies can use to demonstrate their social and
environmental accountability.

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

One way museums can court new audiences is to incorporate other forms of storytelling into their mix. Combining museum experiences with poetry jams, zines, dance, music and other formats can bring potential new fans into the museum while expanding the horizons of folks who already love our work. Today's guest post, by members of the Bated Breath Theatre Company based in Hartford, Connecticut, describes one such mash-up: that brings immersive theatre into the museum. And (bonus) they share data on how their collaboration with the New Britain Museum of American Art actually cross-fertilized their audiences.

Most Bated Breath performances start before the “play”
starts, so in our participatory play Beneath the Gavel about the art market,
upon arrival at our performance space in The New Britain Museum of American Art
the audience had to, in order to receive an auction paddle and an auction book
that doubled as a program, register for the auction.

Beneath the Gavel, New Britain Museum of American Art, Photo: Will
Gangi

Bated Breath, like most theatres, traditionally struggles to
collect information about their audiences, so we embedded some simple survey
questions within the auction registration process. This article shares our
insights from the data about our 4 evening performances and one of our matinee
performances, all of which were packed houses. (One matinee performance was for
students from the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, but the students were
delayed in arrival and we had to skip the registration portion of the play.)

We wanted to know whether our audience were regular
supporters of our company or of the Museum, and we learned that most were new
to Bated Breath and 40% were new to the Museum. And, critically, while some
people traveled great distances to see the performance for a personal reason,
two-thirds of the first time visitors to the Museum were Connecticut residents
and therefore a part of the Museum’s target market.

Almost three quarters of the audience was having their first
Bated Breath experience. Forty percent of the attendees at “Beneath the Gavel”
were on their first visit to the New Britain Museum of American Art, and
two-thirds of those (not shown) were Connecticut residents. We also saw that our performances engaged infrequent
patrons. More than half of the attendees had attended theatre performances or
visited museums three times or less in the previous year.(For about 15% of our audience, this was
their first visit to a museum or a theatre performance in at least a year):

More than half of “Beneath the Gavel” participants had never
or only infrequently attended theatre or visited museums in the year prior.

We did ask some questions about how people learned about the
performance, but our multiple choice answers didn’t correctly anticipate the
audience’s responses so those answers weren’t very useful. In particular, we
did not place any questions about the role of open rehearsals at the museum in
promoting the show. For example, one Museum member told us on opening night
that she had seen the show advertised in the museum’s newsletter, loved theatre
and thought it interesting, but decided that the ticket price was too high.
Then, on a regular visit to the Museum, she stumbled upon an open rehearsal for
the piece and was hooked. So many people told us similar stories verbally that
we concluded our multiple choice answers were not useful. (Next time we embed a
survey into the play, we’ll be sure to start the analysis earlier so we can
improve the questions as the play’s run continues.)

Beneath the Gavel, New Britain Museum of American Art, Photo: Will
Gangi

One fascinating thing we discovered in the data was about
how different the audiences between the performances were, and we think this
data has some subtle but profound implications for how museums should schedule
us in the future. For example, we had only one public matinee performance, held
on a Saturday afternoon. We immediately
saw that this audience was different: the audience was older and was three
quarters women. And the surveys revealed a different history of relating to the
arts:

Of all our performances, this audience was the least likely
to be on their first visit to the New Britain Museum of American Art (24%) and
the least likely to be on their first visit to a museum in the last year (9%).
This audience was the most likely out of all of our performances to be on at
least their 7th visit to a museum this year and the most likely to be on at
least their 7th theatre attendance this year. (Despite this depth of arts
engagement, this audience was also the least likely to have been familiar with
Bated Breath.)

We think this means – and the anecdotal audience comments
back this up – that the matinee performances attracted theatre lovers and the
museums’ most dedicated supporters, particularly those who were theatre lovers.
This one public matinee performance introduced an audience with a deep passion
for theatre to our unique brand of art and was received as a huge gift to the
museum’s most dedicated supporters.

In sum, we found that when museums and theatre work
together, they produce art engagement that is greater than what either can do
alone. And we discovered powerful evidence that some of the subtle scheduling
decisions can unlock even greater successes. We’re looking forward to applying
some of these lessons to our next theatre collaboration with the museum world.

This post originally appeared on 8/25/2016 on the Bated Breath blog, titled "

When museums and theatre work together, the result is more than the sum of the partners." The Bated Breath website profiles a number projects with museums, such as About Freedom: In 3 Acts, created in collaboration with the Amistad Center for Arts and Culture, and the Toulouse-Lautrec Project at the Wadsworth Atheneum. On that site you can also find press coverage of the off-Broadway debut of Beneath the Gavel featured in Forbes, American Theater, Artsy and other publications.

Thursday, June 1, 2017

I know that in reality summer is just as busy as any other season,
but somehow it feels to me as if I have a little extra time to breath, step
back from my daily news feed and expand my horizons. In case you feel the same,
here are a few recommendations for blogs and podcasts to add to your own
queues. I hope they help you find some kindred spirits and refresh your work.

Karen is a newly minted museum studies graduate. At the
other end of the career spectrum, Dan Spock has been working in our field since
he joined t

he Boston Children’s Museum as a designer in 1983. Now director of
the museum at the Minnesota Historical Society, Dan has launched a new blog--Wunderkammer—to share some ruminations he’s
developed in over three decades of museum work. His second post (which went up this week) is Exploring
the Emotional Landscape of Risk and Failure. Failure being one of the
trends featured in TrendsWatch 2017, I was very interested. (Dan on Twitter is @danspock.)

I also recommend you take a look at the Studio blog, documenting the
work of Jeffrey Inscho and his team of “cultural technologists” at the Carnegie
Museums of Pittsburgh. This week Jeff launched a series of posts that will
document the Studio team’s development of a new kind of mobile experience: a
museum chatbot called Muse. “Muse will leverage the
Studio’s user-centered design process and make use of leading-edge technologies
like natural language processing and image recognition, to create an
artificially-intelligent chatbot capable of providing useful information when a
visitor is on-site, as well as surprising and engaging correspondence from
afar.” And the Studio crew will be sharing the resulting open source code on Github, so
you can build on their work!

Museopunks cool new logo bySelena Robleto, Red Velvet Creative

On the podcasting front, I am SO HAPPY that after a nearly
three year hiatus, Jeff Inscho and Suse Cairns have relaunched Museopunks with the support of the Alliance. The first new episode is a stunner:
in The State of Love and Trust, Suse and Jeff interview Dr. fari nzinga of
Southern University at New Orleans, and Adriel Luis, curator of digital and
emerging media at the Smithsonian Pacific American Center. (On Twitter:
@jinscho, @shineslike, @fari_nzinga, @DRZZL.)